{"id":54,"date":"2002-09-17T01:01:08-04:00","date_gmt":"2002-09-17T09:01:08+00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterjanes.ca\/wordpress\/?p=54"},"modified":"2002-09-17T01:01:08-04:00","modified_gmt":"2002-09-17T09:01:08+00:00","slug":"competitive-trivia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterjanes.ca\/blog\/2002\/09\/17\/competitive-trivia\/","title":{"rendered":"Competitive trivia"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Regis-less Who Wants to be a Millionaire?<\/q> started tonight. I’m glad to see they’ve sped it up, although I’m still not much interested in the game itself. (And it is just me, or does Meredith Vieira push<\/q> the real answer?)<\/p>\n\n

I’m going to reveal myself: I’m a trivia snob. I see multiple-choice games like Millionaire as brain candy, but not much more. At the moment, Jeopardy!<\/q> (the regular series, not the back-to-school<\/q>, teen<\/q> or college<\/q> tournaments) is the closest thing to my ideal trivia game show on television, closely followed by (the recently-cancelled) Win Ben Stein’s Money<\/q>.<\/p>\n\n

What makes the ideal trivia-based program? There are a number of elements.<\/p>\n\n

It must be fast-paced.<\/h3>\n

Half of the problem with Millionaire is the speed. Regis-era Millionaire, with its fastest finger<\/q> rounds (which, ironically, slowed the game down more than anything) and interminable discussions and confirmations and manufactured suspense<\/q>-filled pauses, was one of the most ponderous programs I’ve seen, saved only by its host’s personality. The new version is better, but still only manages to hit about 20 questions in half an hour. (Runner-up for slowest trivia round is probably Dog Eat Dog<\/q>, about which the less said the better.)<\/p>\n

Jeopardy!<\/q> is much better–in a 30-minute program there are usually more than 55 questions asked–but suffers from a slow pace in the Final Jeopardy<\/q> round where it takes several minutes to ask and answer a single question.<\/p>\n

(Sale of the Century<\/a>, oddly enough, had what I remember to be one of the better trivia rounds.)<\/p>\n\n

It must be challenging, but not obscure.<\/h3>\n

This is where Millionaire succeeds best and fails worst. Higher-valued questions–those in the real money<\/q> range of $32000 and up–are good examples of being challenging, with their occasional obscurity mitigated by the multiple-choice format. Lower-valued questions, below the $1000 level, are most often a waste of time.<\/p>\n

Jeopardy and WBSM<\/acronym> both do a good job of making their questions challenging, although Jeopardy tends to lead<\/q> their answers too much for my taste (e.g. In Loonie Tunes, this chawactew hunted a wascawwy wabbit.<\/q>).<\/p>\n\n

Tomorrow: Prizes are a reward, not a goal.<\/em><\/p><\/div>

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